TenTonHammer.com - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Welcome to the 943rd Edition of Loading...

If you aren't reading this in your e-mail, you could be. Sign up! Are you looking for gaming news? Look no further for all of the headlines. General industry news, right down to game specific and forum thread feeds are all yours as part of Ten Ton Hammer's RSS Feed . Enjoy!

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The Pulse

First, you vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is Pulse?). To rehash yesterday's explanation, The Pulse has a totally new look this week, focusing more on daily, weekly, and monthly movement than the arbitrary BPM numbers we had before.

If you're a BPM junkie, you can still get an idea of what's going on at the top of the list by heading to our homepage and checking out the arrows. If a game maintains the same ranking but has a green arrow, you know traffic is on the rise. a red down arrow means it's slipping. A line under either arrow means it's up or down in a big way, while a sideways grey arrow means that that particular game is holding its ground.

A newly implemented detailed traffic graph and info for your favorite game is also available by selecting that game from the dropdown on the Ten Ton Hammer landing page. Have a look and let us know what you think in the Loading... forum!

1. Warhammer Online (UP 1)
2. World of Warcraft (Down 1)
3. Age of Conan
4. Star Wars: The Old Republic
5. Stargate Worlds (UP 3)
6. Tabula Rasa
7. EVE Online (UP 6)
8. Lineage 2 (UP 4)
9. Dungeons & Dragons Online (down 2)
10. Lord of the Rings Online (down 1)

Daily Movers & Shakers

17. Pirates of the Burning Sea (UP 14)
12. Runes of Magic (down 7)
16. Guild Wars (UP 7)

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Daily Column

Loading... proof of intelligent life in online games media.

In an informal poll of Ten Ton Hammer staff away messages at 1AM last night, about 30% of you are picking your way through Fallout 3. 28% or 29% wouldn't have warranted a Loading... mention, but 30% does. I was only able to play for about a half hour, which is nowhere near long enough to get me comfortably hooked on a kitschy 1950s post-apocalyptic dystopia that somehow found itself at the end of the 21st century (a little less Bioshock in my Fallout, please).

The tutorial / character creation portion of Fallout 3 has been enjoyable though; starting with your character's birth and memorable childhood events deep in a subterranean vault, allowing you to make decisions on sex, appearance, stats, and disposition while building attachment to your dad along the way. When dad inexplicably leaves the vault and the vault's overseer kills a friend of the family, it's time to leave.

But two RPG elements that I thought MMORPGs had successfully destroyed hit me almost immediately in Fallout 3. First, itemization gone wild. I know that I'd have to give a tinker's damn for item collection to make it in a nuclear wasteland, but I don't as yet see any way to discern what items are potentially useful, rare, or should just be collected to be sold beyond the arbitrary value number. Consequently I go completely klepto, jamming my pockets full of cups, clipboards, eyeglasses... anything so that I don't gimp myself on cash or items later on.

Doubtless I'll get a better feel for what I need as the game rolls on, but the fear of gimpage goes well beyond items. Despite a clever intro to stats, abilities, and perks, I'm not sure if I'll be better served by a knowledge of big guns or explosives, small guns or melee weapons.

Point buy-in systems work in tabletop games because you can usually trust your DM to find a way to use your abilities to worm your way out of a situation. Such systems work in MMORPGs because you can usually depend on the developer to not let you break your character too badly because you'll always have other players and classes as a measuring stick. I'm reminded of Jay Wilson's comments (video link) about Diablo 3's forced automatic stat point assignment at every level: that a manual point assignment system only gives you a good chance to break your character (I'm paraphrasing). D3 and F3 are fundamentally different games, and F3 is certainly more a roleplayer's game just like D3 is more of a multiplayer-friendly game. But my quick playtest of D3 had me wanting to play more, while F3 had me begging for some kind of a save point.

Maybe I'm just having what you might call trust issues with Bethesda (especially since I didn't play the first two Fallout games for long at all) and I certainly need to play the game more, but those are my initial concerns. Those, and the fact that I still haven't figured out where I can and can't save the game. Doubtless the game will get incredible reviews and will deserve most of them (because F3 emphatically does deliver on its back-of-the-box promises), but if RPGs mean bewildering array of choices at every turn over pure adrenaline-filled exploring and adventuring, count me out.

Disagree about F3? Am I going soft? The Loading... forum is your soapbox or, as always, feel free to email me with your thoughts.

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Ten Ton Hammer Epic Thread of the Day

Sometimes they're funny; sometimes they're foolish; sometimes they're flaming; sometimes they're cool. Whatever this one happens to be, it's our Epic Thread of the Day.

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From our /OOC (Off Topic) Forum

The Daily "It Made Me Laugh!"

We've highlighted it before, but Wednesday seems like a good day to take another look at the most popular thread in our /OOC forum (with over 1,100 posts). Flying crocs, totally wrong Halloween costumes, funny videos and images, Auto-Urine Therapy, Pedo bear and more await you in The Daily "It Made Me Laugh!"

Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"That mofo is sky surfing on a croc."
- Ralsu
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Do you have a favorite Epic Thread? Let us know!

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9 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 281 in October! 2781 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]

Images/Video

• Florensia: Exclusive Gameplay Video
• Florensia: Exclusive Character Creation Video

Interviews

• CCP CEO Exclusive Interview on Iceland's Economic Crisis, FanFest 2008
• Pirates of the Burning Sea: Swashbuckling and Derring-Do

Features

• Warhammer Online: Live Event - Witching Night

Community

• Warhammer Online: Guild of the Week
• Age of Conan: Clan Interview - Know Thyself

Guides

• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Mounts
• World of Warcraft: Death Knight Basics

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:

1. Pirates of the Burning Sea: Swashbuckling and Derring-Do
2. CCP CEO Exclusive Interview on Iceland's Economic Crisis, FanFest 2008
3. Florensia: Exclusive Gameplay Video
4. Warhammer Online: Guild of the Week
5. Age of Conan: Clan Interview - Know Thyself
6. Warhammer Online: Paul Barnett Explores Players Behind the Races
7. Warhammer Online: Coyote's Ultimate Guide to WAR, Part 2 - High and Dark Elves
8. Star Wars - The Old Republic:: Art - Tweaking the Lightsabers
9. Carbine Studios: Q&A with Design Director Tim Cain
10. World of Warcraft: The Zombie Invasion
11. WAR-Torn #10: An Exercise in Futility

Real World News

• Man accused of killing girlfriend's fish during fight
  Wanda will be missed, but K-k-k-k-Ken is p-p-p-lotting ruh-ruh-ruh-revenge
• Man's testicles swelled up like footballs after vasectomy
  5 days later, they turned black and burst like ripe melons. And then it gets weird.
• Is surfing the internet altering your brain?
  Nonsense, I'm the same pure and wholesome guy I was before the internet. Can't you tell from these news links?

Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!

- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer Team